


Palinoia

by yonnna



Category: Baccano!
Genre: reference to minor character death, revenge son does same magic trick for 12 years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 16:10:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9079915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonnna/pseuds/yonnna
Summary: Pick a card, any card.Written for the prompt "The obsessive repetition of an act until it is perfected or mastered".





	

“Pick a card, any card!” 

He is an intruder in an adult world, a deck of cards fanned out in his little hands and every eye in the dining room on him. He looks so much the child that he is, fitted blazer somehow too big on his scrawny frame, hat falling over his eyes when he tilts his head up to look at his father. He smiles a toothy smile and repeats his words — _pick a card!_ — in spite of the collective sigh spilling through the room, in spite of the frown he’s met with. 

“’Chino, papa’s busy,” the man groans. He does not look at Luchino when he speaks: his eyes travel around the room, gauging the reaction of his subordinates, deciding what he’ll say once his son has left to redeem himself this _humiliating_  situation. “I told you to stay upstairs.”

He doesn’t allow himself to be rejected so easily; even at this young age, the boy is filled with a boundless determination — he does not know what _for_  yet, and so it is in everything he does. He sticks his chin out, pulls the rim of his hat up to clear his vision. 

“But I learned a new trick!” 

“ _Chino —_ ”

Luchino has turned to face the mask maker to the left of his father, much to his father’s continued ire. He puts his hand to his face and watches through the crack in his fingers as he extends the cards, eyes wide and expectant. 

The mask maker laughs, low and gruff, and Luchino mistakes derision for _cheer_. He plucks a card from the middle of the deck, holding it up to the light and snorting. 

“Now what?”

“Now I —” Luchino scrunches his face up, recalling the instructions he’d read over earlier. “I need the card back, please.”

“What, _this_  card?” 

Luchino nods, and the man smirks, dangling the card just beyond where his short arms can reach. He tries to hop to grab it, but the man stands and even his jumps can’t bring him high enough — though he keeps trying anyway, and trying, and trying, until his face is red with frustration and there are tears welling up in his eyes. 

“G-Give it ba —”

 _Thud_. A fist slams against the tabletop, freezing both the man and the child in place. 

“Enough,” his father breathes, glaring with an intensity that makes Luchino’s boundless determination _meek_. “We have _serious_  business to attend to. This isn’t a place for _games_.”

“But I can really do it this ti —”

“Are you deaf? I don’t have time for your games, _Luchino_.”

He wants to say _it’s not a game_ , but the pressure of a dozen sets of eyes on him suddenly becomes _choking_  when accompanied by his father’s disapproval. He trudges out of the room without another word. 

 

* * *

 

“Pick a card, any card!”

He sits at her bedside day after day and makes the same demand. _Pick a card, any card_. His hands can make only _little_ miracles, but they become more convincing by the day. He is twelve and too old, far too old in the things he has done, to believe that magic can _cure_  her, but it makes her smile, and, he thinks, maybe that’s the best thing a magician can do. He thinks maybe it’s the best thing _he’s_  ever done. 

He knows she’s dying. His father doesn’t tell him — his father doesn’t tell him _anything_  anymore, just sits in his study, motionless for hours — but he _knows_. He killed someone a month ago — not for the first time, but in some ways it had felt like the first time. He was given Monica’s stiletto to use. He had watched the blood drain out of the man like water after a storm. He sees the pallor of a corpse in the white of his mother’s face. 

When the realisation had first hit him he had been unable to stop retching. It’s shaking enough to see a _target_  die, let alone his own mother — and so _slowly; s_ eeing her die a little more every day for weeks on end. In one dark moment he considers the possibility of putting her out of her misery, but he knows he would only be sparing himself and decides against it. 

“Remember, I’m not allowed to see it.” 

This is the only thing he’s found to ease his nausea. She looks alive when she’s happy, and she’s happy when he does these tricks for her. At the time he thinks it’s because she loves stage magic; it isn’t until years after her passing that he will realise it was because she had loved  _him_  and had seen the way it made his eyes light up.

She lays the card on the top of the deck, careful, as instructed for the hundredth time, not to let him catch sight of the illustration. He shuffles them — no, he doesn’t _just_  shuffle them: he makes a _show_  of shuffling them, cards dancing from one hand to the other until he finally collects them again into one neat deck. He pulls one from the middle and holds it out to her. 

“Is this your card?” 

And for the hundredth time she says _yes_. She gives him a clap, he gives her a bow. 

“My little warlock,” she croons.

“ _Rookie_ ,” he corrects. “ _Rookie_ warlock.”

 

* * *

  

“Pick a card, any card!”

The Rookie Warlock fans out a deck of cards in his gloved hands and steals away from the adult world he belongs to. Every eye in the crowded room is on him, and he relishes in the feeling of being looked upon with such joy; not fear, not loathing, not disgust, but _joy_. He’ll never say aloud that his best loved talent is the one that does not draw blood, but even Monica’s mask could not hide the way he glows when he’s on stage. 

Over the years, his magic has become more extravagant; he still cannot make the miracles he _needs_ , but he can saw his assistant in half (even if in _half_  Aging is still taller than most are in _full_ ) and vanish himself into a puff of smoke. He can pull a rabbit from a hat and a rose from his sleeve and he can make a book levitate in thin air — but he has been practising a certain card trick for as long as he can remember, and he has perfected _this_  to an art form. 

When he shuffles the cards it is a spectacle in its own right — they don’t dance anymore, they _fly_ — and when it comes time for the reveal he is no longer so derivative as to pull the expected card from the deck. No, he finds somewhere new every time; perhaps the card is in his hat, or in the audience member’s coat pocket, or perhaps it stuck to the bottom of Aging’s shoe. 

Today it drifts like a snowflake from the ceiling to the open hands of his audience volunteer. Luchino kneels to eye-level and smiles.

“Is this your card?”

The child’s eyes light up. 

“Woah! How’d you know?”

He smiles, storing the child’s happy face away in the back of his mind — a small _forgiveness_  for all the worst things he’s done. 

“A magician never reveals his secrets.”


End file.
